Meet Your Creator: Jef Mallett (Frazz)

Comics fans, we're excited to introduce a new recurring feature to our GoComics blog. A few times each month, we're going to hand the keys over to one of our talented cartoonists for a blog post. They'll share the inspirations behind their comedy, how they think, what's next for them and their characters and how you can access more information about your favorite comic strips/panels and support them further.

Our first creator is Jef Mallett, creator of Frazz. If you've yet to read the strip about an elementary school janitor who shares his wisdom with teachers and students alike, you're in for a treat. The kids are smart and Frazz is even smarter as the guy that has the world figured out for himself. Enjoy.

Jef Mallett, creator of Frazz:By my reckoning, I’ve kept readers waiting just over two
years for a blog item or Facebook post. Which is about how long any given cable
TV or phone company keeps people waiting, which gives me no comfort at all.

Two years is a long time, so let’s start from scratch.
Please forgive me, and I’ll shed the baggage, start anew and get it right. Call
it blogruptcy.

If you’re coming to this from GoComics, here’s what you
presumably already know: I created, draw and write the comic strip “Frazz.” I
do everything except (a) letter the text and (b) everything else. My wife of 25
years, Patty, does the lettering. My own lettering would be fine, I think, but her
plain old handwriting has a style that suits the comics as well as anything out
there except for (and Patty would be the first to agree) Jim Borgman’s in
“Zits.” Then the GoComics folks handle all the messier details, like editing,
distributing, sales, marketing, billing, feeding my pets (I’m joking, but they
probably would if we lived closer to each other) and other impossible things,
like getting me to resume a blog.

And I do mean resume. The idea is that this is the first
of an indefinite string, and I’ll keep it quick so I don’t scare myself away
from writing more, or scare you away from reading more. If I do it right, each
entry will answer a question or two -- about Frazz-related stuff and non-Frazz
stuff -- and raise a few more. And I'll offer my observations about the world
in general. Call it focused distractibility. Basically Frazz itself, just in a
different format with a little different detail.

So: Hi, I’m Jef. I’ve been putting Frazz in newspapers
and on the Web for 12 years now. I was a cartoonist right from the start, which
is no big thing. All kids draw, and usually very well. I liked to write, too,
and I loved using the combination of pictures and words to tell stories. And
I’ve always loved to laugh. By the time I was halfway through high school, I
was drawing a daily comic strip for my local newspaper, The Pioneer, in Big
Rapids, Mich.

I like to say the reason I’m doing this now has less to
do with when I started and more to do with the fact that I never quit, but the
truth is I kind of did try to quit. By the time I was out of high school, I
figured out I wanted to draw comic strips, but I had learned it was as shaky
and arbitrary as any other form of show business. A backup career seemed to be
in order. Here’s how naïve I was: I enrolled in nursing school. Nursing is not
a backup career. I loved it and school was going well, but an opportunity at
the Grand Rapids Press forced a decision. I chose to stay closer to my writing
and art roots, a rash decision that somehow turned out well. Freelancing for
The Press turned into other newspaper jobs and a fine life -- I became art
director and photo editor for the capital bureau of Booth Newspapers, a chain
of eight dailies in Michigan -- but still no comic strips.

I did write and illustrate a children’s book called
“Dangerous Dan.” It was published in 1996, sold something like 30,000 copies in
its first year and zero in its second, the sort of thing that can happen when a
publisher goes out of business without warning. It was great, seriously
rewarding fun in the meantime, and it took me to a lot of elementary and middle
schools for assemblies. I noticed something interesting. Assemblies are pretty
exciting occasions and can be attended by overly excited kids. Somebody had to
calm them down so I could get them riled up again. Teachers couldn’t always do
it; the principal couldn’t always do it. But the janitor could almost always
calm them. Everybody loved the janitor, and respected the janitor, and listened
to the janitor. Fascinating, I thought. I wonder if I might be able to use that
someday.

A few years later, when the first tremors of the current
newspaper-industry quake were tingling, I anticipated my capital bureau closing
and got thinking about backup careers all over again. I should probably, I
thought, go back and finish college. Sigh. But fiiirrrrrst … I’d try another go
at a comic strip. Not so much because I thought it was the better option, or
even a reasonable one. But I just didn’t want to see myself 20 years later wondering
what might have happened.

Whenever I’m in the right mood, I still wonder what
happened. Or at least how it happened. And frankly, sometimes, what’s going to
happen. But I don’t wonder what might have happened, and that’s a good feeling.

I do wonder how I let the blog slip, though.
This was fun. I’ll be back.

Hi Jef! I stumbled across Frazz on gocomics just a few months ago and became a fast fan. I can understand not being able to keep up with a blog since it sounds like you have your hands full. It is great to hear your story since I find myself in a similar situation just now, that is, needing to remake myself. I've got at least twenty more years of working life left and I'm back to square one. Maybe there is some talent that I haven't tapped into yet or some driving question that I need to answer. Thanks for the inspiration!